This invention relates to drawer organizer systems in general, and in particular to an improved addressable drawer organizer with an item display panel and other useful features.
Drawer organizer systems are known and are used generally to store small items in drawers which are slidably mounted in a cabinet designed for this purpose. The cabinet is usually fixed to a wall or a support surface, such as a work bench. Each drawer typically has a drawer pull mounted on a front panel so that a user can slide the drawer outwardly from the cabinet and gain access to the contents of the drawer. Cabinets and drawers have been fabricated from both metal and plastic, with some drawer organizers using metal for both the cabinet and the drawers, others using plastic for both the cabinet and the drawers, and others using a metal cabinet and plastic drawers. The plastic materials used in the past have been either opaque or translucent.
Many types of items can be stored in a drawer organizer. Some examples are fasteners of several kinds, such as nuts, bolts, washers, sheet metal screws, and wood screws; grommets of various sizes; O-rings; electrical connectors; small electronic components, such as diodes, resistors, and capacitors; and medications of various kinds, such as prescription pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter medical remedies and the like. Drawer organizers are found in homes, business premises, work shops and manufacturing facilities, and have proven to be useful in a wide variety of situations requiring the organized storage of small items for future access.
A principal difficulty encountered with the use of drawer organizers lies in the manner of retrieving desired items from the collection of items stored in the several drawers in a given cabinet. In particular, retrieving the correct item requires identifying the contents of individual drawers until the correct drawer is found. In some applications, visual inspection through a transparent front drawer panel is the technique relied upon to identify the types of articles contained in that drawer. In other applications, small labels are adhered to the front panel of the drawers, with each label containing a brief description of the articles contained in that drawer. Both techniques are less than optimal. The visual inspection technique divulges only a minimum of subjective information about the contained articles. Similarly, the label technique is limited by the amount of space available on the label to describe the contained articles. Depending on the nature of the contained articles, the label technique cannot adequately distinguish the articles in one drawer from the articles in other drawers. For example, if the contained articles are resistors of different resistance values and power ratings, it is at best difficult to adequately distinguish among the several choices. The label technique also suffers from the disadvantage that the labels must be changed whenever the kinds of articles contained in a given drawer are changed. Both techniques are relatively inefficient in enabling quick identification of the correct drawer in applications having large collections of different types of articles. In general, the larger the number of drawers, the slower the access time to the contents of the desired drawer.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,348,864 issued Feb. 19, 2002 for “Organizer Management System Using R.F. identification”, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, discloses an organizer management system which is devoid of the above-noted limitations and disadvantages, which can be implemented using any articles suitable for containment in an organizer drawer, and which greatly facilitates ready access to specific items contained in organizer drawers. More particularly, the '864 patent discloses a drawer organizer management system using r.f. identification of individual drawers in a cabinet. The system includes a cabinet having a structure including a rear wall for providing a plurality of drawer locations, the cabinet having a plurality of pairs of external terminals adapted to be coupled to an r.f. signal generator for receiving r.f. signals from the generator, with each of the external terminal pairs being arranged preferably on the rear wall in a position corresponding to a different one of the drawer locations.
A plurality of drawers are each slidably mounted in a different one of the drawer locations between a closed position and an opened position. Each of the plurality of file drawers has a pair of electrically conductive drawer terminals adjacent the rear thereof and are adapted to engage a corresponding pair of the external terminals, a pair of electrical r.f. signal conductors coupled to the drawer terminals, and an r.f. circuit coupled to the pair of r.f. signal conductors. Each of the r.f. circuits has a crystal resonant at a specific frequency and a visible indicator activated whenever the associated crystal detects an r.f. signal at the specific frequency of that crystal. The resonant frequency of each of the crystals is different from the remaining ones of the crystals so that an r.f. signal of a specific frequency applied to the external input terminals of the cabinet causes only one of the plurality of crystals to resonate and only the visible indicator associated to that crystal to be activated.
Each of the drawers has a front panel, and each of the indicators is located on the front panel of the corresponding drawer so as to provide a visible indication of a resonant crystal in the drawer when the drawers are closed. Each of the visible indicators preferably comprises an LED. Each of the drawers also has a rear panel, and the pair of electrically conductive drawer terminals is preferably mounted on the rear panel. Each of the drawers is further provided with a positive detent mechanism for promoting contact between the electrically conductive drawer terminals and the external terminals. Each of the drawers is also provided with a pair of positive contact elements, such as a pair of springs, for promoting contact between the electrically conductive drawer terminals and the external terminals.
The system is used to locate the drawer containing a desired type of item in the following manner. A user enters the identity of a desired item in the system computer, either via a keyboard or by using a mouse to select an item from a list displayed on the computer monitor. In response, the computer performs a table-lookup from a set of frequencies which are uniquely associated to the items stored in the drawers. Once the corresponding frequency has been found, the computer instructs the r.f. signal generator to generate r.f. signals of the correct frequency. These r.f. signals are coupled to the individual cabinet drawers, and the r.f. circuit having the crystal of the correct frequency resonates, thereby illuminating the corresponding visible indicator on the drawer front panel. The user now knows which drawer contains the desired item.
The r.f.signal technology used in the '864 system essentially provides drawer identification signals (the r.f.signals of a specific frequency) and a drawer address comparison circuit for each drawer (the r.f.circuits each having a crystal of a unique specific frequency). This arrangement can be modified by replacing the r.f. technology with host computer generated digital drawer identification signals and address decoders located in each drawer circuit so that the host computer generates drawer identification signals which are broadcast to all drawer cabinets in the system using either wired or wireless communication links. In such an arrangement, the received drawer identification signals are inspected by the address decoders in each drawer circuit and the drawer circuit containing the address decoder having the unique address specified by the received drawer identification signal responds by activating the visible indicator on the front panel of that drawer.
The '864 system provides a low cost, effective and convenient technique for facilitating the location of specific items contained in a drawer organizer system. In addition, the '864 system eliminates, or substantially reduces the need for reliance on the labelling practice followed in setting up drawer organizer systems. Moreover, the '864 system affords great flexibility in arranging drawer organizers. In particular, the identity of the items in any given drawer can be easily changed by modifying the description in the system computer. Also, additional drawers can be added to expand the inventory held in the system, and existing drawers can be deleted from the system by changing the information stored in the computer.
While possessing all the advantages noted above over previous drawer organizer systems, the '864 system requires the use of the pair of electrically conductive drawer terminals adjacent the rear thereof to engage the corresponding pair of external r.f .signal terminals, the inclusion of the pair of electrical r.f. signal conductors coupled to the drawer terminals and the drawer r.f. circuit, and the provision of the positive detent spring mechanism for promoting contact between the electrically conductive drawer terminals and the external terminals. These elements require careful installation in order to construct a fully functioning unit, which adds cost to the manufacturing process, and can be prone to mechanical and electrical failure. In addition, the simple LED indicator used to signify the correct drawer containing the sought item provides no visual information about the identity of the item stored in the designated drawer.